In a sudden change of feeling her heart grew cold toward that sinful pair for which she had but just prayed. Those people became as strangers to her and sank into the mist. Their whispering died away as if it came from a great distance.
It was her own life with which she was now concerned. Gray and morose with its poverty stricken notion of duty, the past lay behind her. Bright and smiling a new world floated into her ken.
She had sworn to love him. She had cheated him. She had let him know want at her side.
Now that she knew what love was, she would reward him an hundred-fold. She, too, could love to madness, to adoration, to death. And she must love so, else she would die of famishment.
Her heart opened. Waves of tenderness, stormy, thunderous, mighty, broke forth therefrom.
Would he desire all that love? And understand it? Was he worthy of it? What did that matter?
She must give, give without measure and without reward, without thought and without will, else she would smother under all her riches.
And though he was broken and famished and mean of mind and wretched, a weakling in body and a dullard in soul; and though he lay there emaciated and gasping, a skeleton almost, moveless, half given over to dust and decay—what did it matter?
She loved him, loved him with that new and great love because he alone in all the world was her own. He was that portion of life and light and happiness which fate had given her.
She sprang up and stretched out her arms toward him.